The last snap of Tom Goode’s NFL career was the most important and famous—or would be if longsnappers ever got credit for anything. It came at the end of Super Bowl V. His Baltimore Colts were tied 13-13 against the Dallas Cowboys with five seconds left. They were in chip-shot range. The Cowboys called timeout—this was 1971, lest you think icing the kicker is a new phenomenon. When Goode broke from the huddle, the thing looked as big as a watermelon. Must’ve been his nerves, because the thing felt like it weighed a ton.

He put the middle and ring finger of his right hand (dominant hand in the parlance) on the laces and slid his index finger as far toward the point as it would reach. He grabbed the other side of the ball with his left hand (guide hand). He fired it between his legs to Earl Morrall, the team’s quarterback and holder, and then looked up to block. He didn’t see where the ball went, but knew he threw a strike. Morrall caught it and placed it before Jim O’Brien kicked it through the uprights.

When the game was over a few minutes later, so was Goode’s nine-year NFL career. He followed that perfect ending with three decades as a coach, teaching the art of snapping. He’s retired now, but players still stop by his home in rural Mississippi for tutorials. “They always praise the kicker, this, that and the other,” says Goode, 74. “But if you don’t have a holder that’s just as good, and you don’t have a snapper that’s just as good—the only time you get your name in the paper if you’re a holder or snapper is if you mess up.”

SNAPPING ANYTHING BUT A SNAP

A different Baltimore franchise is in the Super Bowl this year, but not much has changed for longsnappers and holders. They’re as anonymous as ever.

They could play a key role this year in the Superdome. Four Super Bowls have been decided by last-minute kicks, including the most recent one in New Orleans, when the Patriots beat the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. A close game is likely—the last six Super Bowls played indoors were won by 4, 6, 3, 11, 3 and 3 points.

Though San Francisco 49ers kicker David Akers is struggling, the 49ers and Ravens have strong special teams pedigrees. Ravens coach John Harbaugh was a special teams coach in college and the NFL for nearly two decades. 49ers special teams coach Brad Seely won three Super Bowls as the Patriots’ special teams coach and was in charge of the greatest postseason special teams run in history when the Patriots won the Super Bowl after the 2001 season.

The longsnapper and holder are part of special teams but treated the opposite, as if any schlub off the street could do what they do. Kickers are not considered real football players, but at least they are held in high esteem because they have a skill ordinary men lack. Even less admired are the longsnapper and holder. Anybody can do that.

Bend over, fire the ball. Catch it, put it down. Easy.

If anybody could do it, anybody would do it. But neither job is easy. The kicker gets the glory, gets interviewed, and gets the points beside his name. Pity the longsnapper and holder, they get nothing, unless they screw up. Then what they get, nobody wants. If the kicker—the scrawny, little, single-digit wearing kicker!—is the undisputed stud of your unit, your unit needs better PR. For once, let’s give the guy who snaps and the guy who holds some love.

MEET THE RAVENS' WOLFPACK

The Baltimore Ravens field goal unit calls itself The Wolfpack, a reference kicker Justin Tucker plucked from the movie The Hangover. The Wolfpack is longsnapper Morgan Cox, holder Sam Koch and Tucker. They want every field goal attempt to go the same way every time.

Before every field goal and PAT snap, Morgan puts his heels on the relevant hash mark, regardless of where the ball is, even if that means the refs have to give a little leeway as he grabs it. Snapping from the same place relative to the hash mark every time means the holder, Koch (who is also the punter), can get into his stance at the same place every time and spot the ball at the same place every time. For The Wolfpack, it's the corner of the hash mark 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage.

Tucker uses his right foot to mark a spot for Koch. Koch puts his left index finger on the spot and leaves it there, so Tucker has a target as he gets set. Tucker, eyes on the spot Koch’s finger is touching, nods when he’s ready. That’s Koch’s cue to put his hand right hand up.

Bent over, looking between his legs, Cox focuses on his target: the cross created by Koch’s left knee and arm. (Other longsnappers aim for the holder’s hand, his left arm pit and his left elbow.) Cox fires, and the ball spins an industry-standard 3.5 times on its way to Koch.

“A perfect snap would be right at my hands, and something I catch with the laces in my fingertips,” Koch says. “We look at it as a clock when we catch the football, like a clock that is upright on the wall. Sometimes you’ll have one (with the laces) at 2 or 10. Ninety to 95 percent of the time, that thing is at 12 or 12:30.”

Koch catches the ball and places it on the spot. If the snap comes as planned, the laces already will be out. The less Koch has to spin the ball to get the laces out the better, because it’s easier for Tucker to focus on a stationary ball than a spinning one. In placing the ball on the spot, Koch has a margin of error of a dime. If he misses by more than that, Tucker’s stroke will be off.

If Koch is going to miss the spot, it’s better to miss toward the line of scrimmage and/or toward himself because it’s easier for Tucker to adjust by stretching his swing than shortening it. Still, any miss is bad, the equivalent of moving the ball when a golfer is in his backswing.

Every kicker likes his ball placed in a particular way. Tucker wants his tilted slightly back and toward Koch.

From snap to kick, the goal is 1.2 to 1.3 seconds. If it takes 1.4, the kick probably will get blocked. If it takes 1.5, it certainly will. Too fast is a problem, too. Less than 1.2 probably means the kicker’s form was poor. “If there is somebody who has the ability to go that fast, and hit a clean ball every time, then by all means,” says Vikings longsnapper Cullen Loeffler.

If the Ravens’ snap and hold are good, chances are the field goal will be, too. Tucker made 30 of 33 attempts and all 42 extra point attempts in the regular season. He is 2-for-2 on field goals and 8-for-8 on PATs in the postseason.

With such a finely tuned kick routine, The Wolfpack tried to find a consistent (and elaborate) post-kick congratulatory handshake. But the best Cox, Koch and Turner can manage is a low-five.

THEIR OWN LITTLE WORLD

Not all special teams units are as diligent as the Ravens in making every snap and hold the same, but they all strive for consistency. The only way to achieve that is hours upon hours of practice. Snap after snap. Day after day. Year after year.

Goode started snapping in high school, banging balls off of a target he painted on a garage door. At Mississippi State, he hung tires from the goal posts, one at field goal height and one at punt height, and shot target practice.

Lonie Paxton was a longsnapper in college for four years and 12 in the NFL before being cut by the Broncos before this season. He says he snapped so many balls that his arm feels like it’s going to fall off when he shakes hands. “I calculated it. I’m close to 750,000 to 1 million,” Paxton says.

The math: 150 snaps per day for 16 years equals 876,000.

So much work gives the best longsnappers incredible accuracy. It is a staple of local news to film a longsnapper snapping into the open window of a moving car. Ken Walter, Paxton’s holder in New England, says Paxton once made four of 10 baskets from the halfcourt line at a local gym—by snapping the ball.

So much repetition leads to abilities that transcend muscle memory. One day in camp last summer, the Panthers' special teamers tried to guess, to the fraction of a second, how long each “operation” (that’s what they call the snap-hold-kick) took. Out of 10 guesses, they got five exactly right and three or four within a hundredth of a second, Panthers longsnapper J.J. Jansen says.

Longsnappers don’t have to look to know they made a good snap. They know by how the ball came out of their hand. Absent heavy wind, holders don’t have to look to see if a kick is good. They know by the hold, the swing and the hit.

Of the 32 longsnappers in the NFL, only the 49ers' Brian Jennings, the Giants' Zak DeOssie and the Bears' Patrick Mannelly were drafted. Many of the other 29 have bounced around the league for years, which partially explains their clique. They’re like closers in baseball, only not wound so tight. When Vikings longsnapper Cullen Loeffler signs autographs, he sometimes writes, “laces out” under his name in homage to the quote from the movie "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective."

When they played together in New England, Paxton, holder Ken Walter and kicker Adam Vinatieri used to go through the drive-through at McDonald’s together in full uniform, helmets included.

In interviews, longsnappers and holders talk about each other admiringly. They talk with each other before and after games. They watch each other, root for each other, on TV. “I’m the weird guy at the Super Bowl party who’s the only one watching on a fourth down on a punt or a PAT,” Jansen says.

There’s been plenty to watch this offseason. Three games have been decided on late field goals. Jansen described Cox’s snap on a game-winner in double overtime against the Broncos in the divisional round as “perfect.”

Mannelly was impressed with a Falcons snap that didn’t even count.

Longsnapper Josh Harris fired away even though the Seahawks called timeout as the Falcons lined up for a game-winner in the divisional round. That gave Harris’ kicker, Matt Bryant, an extra swing. “Watching that, I was, I don’t want to say proud, but it was a great move on his part,” Mannelly says.